Whenever it is invoked on the same Object more than once during an execution of an application, the hashCode method must consistently return the same value, provided no information used in equals comparisons on the object is modified. This value need not remain consistent from one execution of an application to another execution of the same application.

If two Objects are equal according to the equals method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two Objects must produce the same value.

It is not required that if two Objects are unequal according to the equals method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must produce distinct results. However, the programmer should be aware that producing distinct results for unequal objects may improve the performance of hash-based containers.

Return true iff no further changes can be made to the Object, that would effect the outcome of a call to its equals method.

Except for Objects which are naturally immutable (such as String), being immutable generally implies that the Object is only referenced via const pointers or views. Objects which hold references to child Objects, may need to take the immutability of their children into account when determining their own immutability.

This extended check is not performed by the default implementation, but can be integrated into the immutability checks by overriding this method, as well as making use of MemberHandles to reference child Objects.

Output a human-readable description of this Object to the given stream.

coherence::lang::operator<<(std::ostream, Object::View) is defined and will call into the toStream method, to output Objects. If a managed String object is desired, the COH_TO_STRING macro can be used to build up a String from streamable contents.